Wiggling Out

Since the death of Aristide Briand, the greatest orator in the French language is considered by most Europeans to be Emile Vandervelde, elderly President (leader) of the Second (Socialist) International.

Though a Belgian (he has several times been Foreign Minister) Socialist Vandervelde was in Paris last week when he launched an attack on the Third (Communist) International, particularly condemning Moscow's doctrine that "the present is the last crisis of Capitalism, inevitably to be followed by the World Revolution of the World Proletariat."

"In this preaching of catastrophe," smiled Emile Vandervelde, "they multiply quotations tending to snow that, according to Marx and Engels, the increasing degradation of the proletariat and the economic catastrophe of Capitalism are necessary conditions of the coming revolution.

"In 1852 Engels wrote to Marx that the great day was approaching. In 1853 he wrote again that France was on the verge of ruin, that the revolution was a matter of months.

"What the Communists of today forget is that Marx and Engels constantly revised their theories as fast as they were contradicted by facts. In 1885 Friedrich Engels pointed out--and the world was then still in the grip of the crisis that had begun in 1873--that Capitalist production could not be stabilized, but must go on increasing if Capitalism was to persist. What would happen, he asked, on the day when, because of American exports to Europe, the British lion's part in supplying the world with goods should come to a standstill? How could Capitalism get out of that dilemma? "Nevertheless, after twelve years of an apparently insoluble crisis. Capitalism managed to wiggle out, and indeed become more prosperous than ever. "Today we are again in the position that Engles described--stagnation, poverty, superabundance of capital on the one hand, superabundance of idle labor on the other, with every appearance that the dilemma, once more, cannot be solved without a radical change of regime. "But does this mean that the revolution is for tomorrow? We have believed that too often in the past to hazard such a prediction again."

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